Poverty is Ghana’s greatest threat – Dr. Yaw Adutwum
Aspiring New Patriotic Party (NPP) flag bearer Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum says poverty, not the rising cost of living, is the greatest threat facing Ghana.
The former Education Minister argued that unless the nation tackles poverty head-on with bold and innovative solutions, its long-promised transformation will remain elusive.
President of Ghana means that you have a mindset that tells you that things can be better than what I’ve inherited or what I see today.
If I ask anybody what the greatest challenge facing Ghana is, many will talk about the cost of living and how difficult things are. But at the end of the day, I conclude that the greatest threat facing this nation is poverty, and we have to be frontal with it,” he said on Joy News’ PM Express on September 16.
Dr. Adutwum said Ghana’s development history reflects lost opportunities.
“Why is it that we built factories in the 1960s, but they are gone? Why is it that we started so well, and countries like Singapore come here and marvel at the pace of transformation of Ghana?
In fact, some economists thought that Ghana would be the first black nation to become developed. What went wrong? What did we miss?” he asked.
He drew a sharp contrast with Singapore’s development trajectory, recalling the foresight of its founding leader.
“When Lee Kuan Yew came to Ghana in 1963, he was amazed at the Ghanaian transformation taking place at the time. It is on record that he wrote in his diary that he had seen something in Africa. Ghana had gold, diamond, cocoa, and other resources that he didn’t have, but he was going to focus on human capital development.
It is also said that he couldn’t understand why a developing country with such a great university had it headed by a non-scientist. He knew clearly that education—specifically STEM education—was what was going to change Singapore. Built on engineering and innovation, before long, the country emerged out of poverty,” he explained.
Dr. Adutwum stressed that his presidential ambition is anchored on fighting poverty through education reform.
“My quest to become, first the flag bearer of the NPP and then the president of Ghana is for us to do what we have never done—directly confront poverty and ask: what kind of education system should we create that will enable us to become innovators, critical thinkers, collaborators, and effective communicators, the four Cs.
We need to begin tackling our challenges through a different prism, looking at age-old problems with a new set of eyes and devising solutions that we’ve never seen before,” he said.
Source: myjoyonline.com
